We made custom bedroom monograms and framed them above our bed to personalize our room and add a bit of black and white charm.
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Breaking The Mold
We promised more photos of our two guest bedrooms sporting their new crown molding, so here they are. First, we bring you the second bedroom, with crisp white three inch molding to swank things up: And the third bedroom (also known as our old converted dining room) looks mighty fine with the same polished white molding adding some architecture: But the real transformation took place in the master bedroom, with the addition of an 8 inch plank of wood that makes the wardrobes look like custom built ins. Stay tuned for the juicy reveal tomorrow. We can hardly wait…
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How Much Did Our Kitchen Renovation Cost?
After our big kitchen reveal yesterday, it seems like the million dollar question still lingers: how much did it cost? (Hint: It wasn’t millions… and it was WAY below the national average spent on a major kitchen remodel, which is $44,000 according to realtor.org) After crunching some numbers last night we figured out exactly how much our wallets really bled during this project and (thankfully) how much we managed to save in the process. And we’re talking start to finish- wider doors, new floors, electrical, lighting, appliances, etc, etc. This wasn’t just your average cabinet and countertop update. Here’s the breakdown: Demo & Construction: $1,400 (negotiated down from $2,400) A local contractor and mason removed
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Checking Out Our Pashmina Granite At The Stoneyard
Our new and improved granite slabs moseyed into town this week and, unlike our last visit to the stoneyard, it was definitely love at first sight. Here’s Sherry gettin’ friendly with our two hunks of Pashmina before they go in for cutting. The best news of the day was that our beautiful new counters are coming home on Tuesday. Score! That means our Home Depot installer can come back on Wednesday to hook up the plumbing and – dare I say it? – our new kitchen will be COMPLETE. ‘Til then, you’ll find us drooling over this photo we snapped of our soon-to-be countertop.
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Lesson: Pick Granite Counters From A Slab, Not A Sample
The excitement began yesterday when we visited the stone yard to check out our granite slabs. And ended when we laid eyes on the giant hunk of Blanc Noir. The small, white sample with gray & black flecks that we fell in love with months ago looked nothing like the huge, gray, polka-dotted pattern in front of us. We knew our tiny kitchen definitely couldn’t pull off that busy, 101 Dalmations-esque look and we had to hunt down another option. Fast. Thankfully, several trips to Home Depot and a few local stone yards led us to our one true love: Pashmina. It’s everything that Blanc Noir isn’t: much lighter and less spotty with much more natural “movement” (think
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How To Add A Lamp Shade To A Ceiling Fan
We updated our ceiling fan with a simple lamp shade that we attached in the place of the glass bulb cover. The result is a lot more current and crisp- and it was super easy!
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Kitchen, You Are Missed
This not having a functioning kitchen thing is getting old. It may sound strange, but we were too lazy to go out to eat tonight. Instead, we mustered the energy to attempt cooking in our counterless and sinkless kitchen. Fortunately, the meal itself (chocolate chip pancakes) was relatively easy to make using a cabinet top as our work surface. We also confirmed that our stovetop still functions after almost 3 months of dormancy. It’s the already annoying task of clean-up that reminds you how frustrating it is to not have a kitchen sink. Let’s just say doing dishes in the bathroom doesn’t exactly inspire me to play chef again anytime soon.
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Blast From The Past: Part 3
We’ve returned from our Christmas in West Virginia just in time to grace you with the third and final part of our “Places We Used to Live” video series. This time it’s a new city (Richmond, VA) and a new arrangement (cohabitation). Ooh la la. Our First Apartment Together in Richmond was a pretty cookie-cutter one-bedroom in a pretty cookie-cutter suburban apartment complex. That didn’t stop us from being over the moon about finally sharing a home together AND getting way more space for less than half of our combined rent in NYC. Here are the goodies to watch for this time: The giddiness in Sherry’s voice as she excitedly points out certain “features” Our
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Blast From The Past: Part 1
First things first – Merry Christmas everyone! We’re busy enjoying some quality family time, so here’s a pre-prepared post for everyone to enjoy in the meantime: The other day we set out to clean up our poor little iBook’s overloaded hard-drive. It quickly turned from a mass-file-deleting to a mass-let’s-reminisce-about-this-and- then-keep-it-for-the-memories. So, the bad news is that the hard-drive didn’t get much relief. The good news is that we found fun things to share. The best of our re-discoveries was a series of video clips. Between the many clips of puppy-sized Burger we actually found a few home-related ones. Our favorites being video tours of some of our old NYC apartments that Sherry had shot
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Spreading Holiday Cheer
As mentioned in our “acceptance speech,” we planned to give a portion of our prize money from RemodelingMySpace.com’s contest to a local housing charity. So when our check arrived on Saturday it was finally time to spread the love. And this time the love went to Richmond’s Better Housing Coalition. The Better Housing Coalition has been working in Richmond for 20 years to revitalize communities in our area, primarily by taking neglected homes in historic neighborhoods and turning them into affordable housing for low-income families. For instance, they do work in Union Hill, the neighborhood featured in the TLC special “Flip It Back” we reported on a few weeks ago. We’re still learning about the
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All Good in the Hood
After 15 painfully slow days of waiting impatiently, our kitchen remodel picked back up again this Monday with the arrival of our replacement corner cabinet. Which means that the installer could come over yesterday (right at 8am, no less) to put in the final cabinet (which had to be reordered from KraftMaid due to the fact that the first one was backwards). Mike The Install Guy also took care of a few other finishing touches while he was here: adding toe kicks & shoe molding, venting the hood up through the attic and attaching the last part of our hood- all little things but they made a world of difference (proving that the devil really
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Classy Richmond vs Tacky Richmond
For the most part, Richmond is a classy city: Jeffersonian architecture, cobblestone streets, Sunday brunches, etc, etc. Even during the holidays, areas like historic Monument Avenue keep their Christmas decorations full of class- like this fancy little tree below. But I’d be lying if I told you that Monument Avenue Christmas decor was the norm around Richmond these days. This is actually the time of year where other parts of the city are happy to embrace their tacky side. Hence our beloved and famous (infamous?) Tacky Light Tour. I can’t claim to be an expert on the Tacky Light Tour, but what I do know is that it’s basically a list of homes in the
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